Whiteout, and: The White Orchard, and: Eye Exam, and: Trawler

Whiteout

Honey mushrooms glow in the dark;in a sweat, a journalist wakes

to a roadside bomb; when a womanoutside a bakery offers to wash

your car windshield, you give hersome cash, and what will suffice?

Cottonwood seeds swirl in the air;in Medellín, your host invites you

to lunch at his house; you sippotato and cilantro soup, glance

at a door open to an enclosed yardwith a hammock and mango tree,

the space a refuge inside bulletpockedwalls. A narwhal pokes

its tusk through ice into the air;it exhales: whiteout: how to live,

where to go: in the yard, you heara circular saw rip the length of a plank.

The White Orchard

Under a supermoon, you gaze into the orchard —a glass blower shapes a glowing orange mass into a horse —you step into a space where you once lived —crushed mica glitters on plastered walls —a raccoon strolls in moonlight along the top of an adobe wall —swimming in a pond, we notice a reflected cottonwood on the water —clang: a deer leaps over the gate —every fifteen minutes an elephant is shot for its tusks —you mark a bleached earless lizard against the snowfall of this white page —the skins of eggplants glistening in a garden —our bodies glistening by firelight —though skunks once ravaged corn, our bright moments cannot be ravaged —sleeping near a canal, you hear lapping waves —at dawn, waves lapping and the noise of men unloading scallops and shrimp —no noise of gunshots —you focus on the branches of hundred-year-old apple trees —opening the door, we find red and yellow rose petals scattered on our bed —then light years —you see pear branches farther in the orchard as the moon rises —branches bending under the snow of this white page —

Eye Exam

  E D F C Z Phis eyesight is tethered to shore —

  no sign of zebrasbut spotted towhees repair their nest;

  before the ditch is cleared,plum trees are blossoming along a riparian bank —

  he pauses at the gaps between letters,notices how his mind has an urge to wander,

how it resists being tethered to question and quick reply —  yellow daffodils are rising in the yard;

    behind his eyelids,a surge of aquamarine water is breaking to shore:

  they are stretching,they are contorting into bliss —

  and as the opthamologistrotates lenses, “Is it clearer with 1 or 2?”

he sees how this moment is lens, mirror, spring,    and how, “1,”

D E F P O T E Csharpens his vision to this O, the earth.

Trawler

In first light, a raucous, repeating cry of a bird —you squint at the ocean, where the edgeof far water, darker than sky, limns

the curving horizon; a white trawlerinches along the coast, and white specksof other times appear — bobbing

in waves that break behind you and rollonto a Kilauea beach; a mushroomrises below a palm tree, unfolds

a convex cap: the cap flattens and releasesspores into the air — waves of pleasurerun through your body and hers;

in early light, bathing at an outdoor shower,shadows of palm leaves against a wall,a single plumeria blossom on a tree —

and, wherever you are, the moonpulls, in waves breakingand receding, breaking and receding along a coast.